Pussy Riot's Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alyokhina

Even after serving prison terms for their punk activism and watching the sad decline of Russia's protest movement over the last few years, the most visible members of Pussy Riot haven't lost their keen sense of political pranksterism.

Nadya and Masha are in New York to speak at the fifth annual Women in the World Summit, a star-studded event put on by media mogul Tina Brown; an admirably critical Columbia Journalism Reviewarticle says the summit is “meant to expose Americans to the voices and experiences of women around the globe, and to connect full wallets with worthy causes.” The lobby of Lincoln Center's David H. Koch Theater is overflowing with free Coke products and gourmet popcorn, Toyota is offering ticket-buyers complimentary rides home, and, looking at my outfit instead of my ticket stub, a security guard informs me that I have wandered into the high-priced orchestra section by accident. Like February’s Amnesty International concert at Brooklyn's Barclays Center, where Nadya and Masha were introduced by Madonna, there’s something ironic about anti-capitalist activists being honored at this kind of event, but—as ever—the duo bring a refreshing jolt of anarchy to the proceedings.

Forty minutes before they go onstage, they tell the tightly-managed event's organizers that they’re going to deliver their speech without a translator—the first time they’ve ever spoken publicly in English. This incites a small panic backstage. “But that’s why we love them, and why they're being honored here in the first place,” someone on their team tells me afterward. “They can’t be micromanaged. They’re not playing by anybody’s rules but their own.”

Dressed in interlocking black-and-white outfits—a sartorial yin-and-yang—Nadya and Masha address an audience that includes Barbara Walters, fashion icon Diane Von Furstenberg, and the outspoken Ukranian musician Ruslana—the only person in the building who renders them star-struck. Their speech is incisive and poetic: “While we were in prison, we learned to be inspired by the little things—a ray of sunshine through the bars, a strangely shaped crack in the ceiling.” They speak slowly and with razor-sharp conviction. “Punk culture has taught us that to be moderate and restrained is not always the correct choice,” Nadya says. “When your intuition is telling you that the time has come to leave behind your moderation, do it!”

A little while later, we’re outside the Koch Theater, fighting one of those gusty spring days when lighting a cigarette should be considered an Olympic sport. We stake out a discreet corner, but a few young women spot Nadya and Masha and ask for pictures; they graciously agree but are also visibly weary of this sort of scene. As the photo snaps, Masha smiles, but Nadya does not.

Sporting chunky, electric blue glasses and a wavy mane of honey-colored hair, Masha has a buoyantly goofy energy about her. Nadya, on the other hand, speaks in a low, deliberate voice that very often drips with sarcasm. Her smooth brown bob is pulled back with a red scrunchie, and—as in pictures—her expressive eyes and mouth silently speak about 1,000 different words, most of them synonyms for get real.

Masha Alyokhina and Nadya Tolokonnikova at a recent Voice Project event in L.A. Photo by John Tyler Curtis.

Before they leave for L.A. the next day, they have a full itinerary ahead of them. But in their few hours of downtime in Manhattan, they’re intent on buying new shoes for their kids back home (Nadya has a 5-year-old daughter, Gera, and Masha has a 6-year-old son, Filipp) and—Masha lifts up the chewed-up sole of her boot, laughing—themselves. We decide to take advantage of one of those Toyota-sponsored rides, though Masha is adamant about riding the subway on the way back. They talk to me in English for practice, and though they are still learning how to speak the language, they definitely understand its humor. As soon as we get in the car, Nadya says she has no problem keeping up with the swift pedestrian pace of New York, because in Russia she gets plenty of exercise “running away from cops.”

Nadya and Masha also showed off their acerbic wit and impeccable comic timing during their first American post-prison interview on “The Colbert Report” in February—no small feat considering the conversation was mediated through a translator. The women hadn’t heard of Stephen Colbert before the taping, but Hunter Heaney, founder of nonprofit The Voice Project, found the perfect way to traverse the culture barrier: In the car on the way to the studio, he loaded up some segments of the host making fun of Putin on his phone. Very quickly, they decided this Colbert guy was all right.

The mood back in Russia, of course, is much grimmer. Since their release from prison, Nadya and Masha have been arrested twice—once on suspicion of theft, and then a week later for protesting in support of a group of fellow political activists known as the May 6 Prisoners—and have been attackedmultiple times on the street. Even within their community of ostensible allies, there has been friction. The night that Nadya and Masha appeared at the Amnesty Concert, anonymous members of the collective published a letter claiming that because they had become “carried away with the problems in Russian prisons” and strayed from the initial ideology of the collective, Nadya and Masha were no longer members of the group. They seemed to have brushed these accusations off, though, and prefer to let their actions affirm that they are indeed still a part of Pussy Riot.

During the Sochi Olympics (which they asked their supporters to boycott), Nadya and Masha took part in filming a new Pussy Riot video for their song “Putin Will Teach You How to Love the Motherland”, and they have been involved in the group’s subsequent actions, even as they continue their prison advocacy work, launching a prisoners’ rights NGO called Zona Prava. Their message is not one of exclusion and strictly defined rules, but of fluidity and solidarity. “Anyone can be Pussy Riot!” they urge in their speech at the summit.

But after spending an afternoon with them, what strikes me most about Nadya and Masha is how funny they are, and how often they are giggling conspiratorially about something or another. At the summit they are introduced as “brilliant pranksters turned political prisoners,” but no such transformation has taken place; they still manage to embody both of these roles simultaneously. Of course, being a merry prankster can be its own kind of political statement. “Try as those who put us here might,” Nadya wrote in one of her prison letters, “we are not going to commit the sin of gloom.” Pussy Riot remind us that, in the face of oppression, injustice, and profound bureaucratic absurdity, fun can be a revolutionary act.

As we drive along the East River, Nadya flips through a New York City guidebook and follows our route on a map. As they did onstage, they insist on conducting our interview in English. Nadya’s husband Petr is in the passenger seat, ready to help with any complicated translations. “I guess we can use men for that,” Nadya deadpans.

What follows is the conversation we had in the car, lightly edited for clarity.

"There are areas of official life in the United States that are similar to Russia. For example: disbursement of protest, and the way American prisons are run, which is pretty tough."

Pitchfork: Do you feel that the U.S. media has misrepresented you in any way?

Nadya Tolokonnikova: We have some problems when we talk about the May 6 Prisoners, who are political prisoners in Russia. From time to time, the media cuts our speeches about these people because they don’t know who they are, and they don’t want to learn who they are. We had a really nice interpreter on "The Colbert Report", and she insisted that the part about the May 6 Prisoners wasn’t cut from the program. But on "The Today Show", for example, I think they just don’t know. It’s strange, because we’re always talking about these guys. The last time we were in New York, 70 percent of the time we were talking about this case.

Masha Alyokhina: They want to listen to what they already know. And actually sometimes it’s hard to show people something new, if this new thing doesn’t have something bright or remarkable, something that you can remember very fast. This Bolotnaya Square case is hard to explain because our government threw these completely normal guys in prison—for some of them, the May 6 demonstration was the first demonstration they’d gone to in their whole lives. It’s just common people—not, like, stars, or pretty women, or something—and they have already been in jail for two years, and nobody knows about it.

Pitchfork: Do you think that the political climate in Russia has become more stifling since you’ve gotten out of prison? What changed over those two years?

NT: Russia really changed, and I realized it maybe two months after my release. Because we spent two years in these other conditions in prison, we continued to live in the Russian reality of 2012, which is when we were arrested. And all people around us were trying to describe to us how something changed. There was a big apathy. People don’t believe in political changes. But only two years ago…

MA: It was a different time.

NT: It was very different.

Pitchfork: You’ve been arrested twice this year, and attacked repeatedly on the street. Do you feel that you’re in danger?

MA: In Sochi, we were there maybe four days, and during that time I think we made some progress. You’ve seen the latest song, the video clip [for “Putin Will Teach You How to Love the Motherland”], right?

When that Cossack incident caused a big scandal, the governor, Alexander Tkachyov, ordered an investigation, but that was sort of a cover-up. Still, people have now moved to “softer” actions against the group, rather than beating and fighting. Sometimes when we travel to regions outside of Moscow, there are people who spray green medical paint on members of the group, and they are obviously under the control of the police and trained by the police.

Pitchfork: You’ve been advocating for prison reform since your release, and last time you were in the U.S. you toured some of our prisons. How do the other jails you've visited around the world compare to Russian prisons?

MA: The experience traveling to European prisons [made us] believe that reorganization of the prison system is possible. Change can be effective, and it can be made better.

Pitchfork: What’s something that has surprised you about visiting America?

MA: New York is an amazing city.

NT: We find it very inspiring. But obviously, there are things we don’t like, too. Not really things that we’ve seen before our own eyes, but we’re really disappointed by the Occupy disbursement procedure, and that it was dispersed by police. There are areas of official life in the United States that are similar to Russia. For example: disbursement of protest, and the way American prisons are run, which is pretty tough.

Pitchfork: What’s the state of Russian punk music right now? Anything you’d recommend listening to?

NT: It’s quite sad, because in most cases you have Western[-style] examples that are adapted to the Russian landscape, and that’s not too interesting. There are a few punk bands that make really original music right now, though. They do exist. We have this group called Sonic Death, and they are very good.